Homotoxicology Optimizes Mesotherapy

© Copyright 2003 by Bruce H. Shelton, M.D., M.D.(h), DiHOM & HEEL Inc. USA Medical Director, USA
(Explore Issue: Volume 12, Number 5)

Do you recall how, when you were young, you might have had the opportunity to sit around a campfire in a circle of friends and tell stories and play games? One very popular game was to whisper a short sentence to the person immediately on the right, out of earshot of everyone else, and then have that person pass it on to the next person, until the message went full-circle. The sentence might start off with something like: “Mary sure looks pretty tonight in her nice new blue dress,” and after 15 people repeated or embellished it, they’d wind up with “Mary sure looks hot in her disheveled blue dress after she walked in the woods with John.”

Sometimes the story sounded better, and other times it ended up worse. Embellishment can be either good or bad or just simply different. Such appears to be the interesting story about the exciting new field of mesotherapy of Dr. Michael Pistor, of Paris, France, who first wrote about it in 1952. But before delving into its wonderful therapeutic aspects, it is worthwhile to follow the trail of the mesotherapy story around the world-wide ‘campfire’ of training experience.

Dr. Pistor has a protégé in the person of Dr. Jacques LeCoz, also of Paris, whom he personally trained and who is a prolific teacher, currently operating a training course on a bi-weekly basis, which many American physicians have attended. There are numerous websites on the Internet authored by some of his students.

However, the campfire has also taken a different direction toward the southeast from France to Italy, where a group of physicians, highly knowledgeable in homotoxicology, have taken the courses and added their specific knowledge of homotoxicology to the protocols of mesotherapy, to develop what is beginning to emerge as bio-mesotherapy. The well-known Dr. Ivo Bianchi has utilized these techniques in his clinic in Verona, Italy, and has had the opportunity to train other experienced homotoxicologists, including Dr. Arturo O’Byrne of Cali, Colombia. Dr. O’Byrne is an esteemed teacher who had the opportunity to train Dr. Juan Carlos Mendez of Venezuela, who also runs an active practice and training programs. Dr. Mendez has established a consulting service in Miami for Spanish-speaking American physicians. This specific homotoxicology approach differs from the French technique.

Mesotherapy is a treatment modality that stimulates the mesodermal layer of the skin. This is where the matrix, or ground substance of the body, is located. Dr. Pischinger described it quite clearly, and some biologists refer to it as “Pischinger’s Space.” The mesoderm forms the connective tissue of the body, including the collagen, bones, ligaments, tendons and muscles, as well as the fatty tissues that surround our organs. This is why treatment of this important layer gives us the ability to reduce fat, and to some degree reshape our appearance.